A current trend in wearable fashion is to embed technology as wearable technology. One such application is the micro- or nano-etching of jewelry such as metal, pearl, or stones, with information that can uniquely identify the jewelry and/or contain information meaningful to the wearer. An example is a NanoRosetta® medallion which can include all the text of the Bible or the lifetime written works of Shakespeare.
To contain such vast amounts of texts, the letters of the text must be reduced down to several microns or less. The smaller the text or images, the higher the magnification and the more advanced the scanning reading devices need to be. For example a high powered high resolution microscope would be needed to read back the books on the NanoRosetta® medallion. For even smaller features, an Atomic Force Microscope, Scanning Electron Microscope, or White Light Interferometer would be needed to recover the written information.
Several methods currently used to create small-sized physical features by printing or etching information such as text or images on jewelry are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,830,573, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. The physical features produced by the diffraction patterns etched or printed on the jewelry article may be too small to read without visual aids such as those discussed above. However, a wearer of such jewelry article may desire to read the etched or printed human readable information, even when they do not have access to an optical visual aid.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 9,444,524 discloses methods for sharing of electronic messages using an NFC chip embedded in a gemstone, such as a pearl. An NFC writer is used to first write information, such as an associated remembrance or memory of an event in an encoded format such as a digital audio or video file, into the NFC chip in the form of an electronic file. When the gemstone with the recorded NFC data is subsequently provided close to a different NFC device, the information recorded in the NFC chip can be accessed by the NFC device, thus accessing the stored remembrance or memory of the event.
However, there is no association between the information recorded on the NFC chip and any human readable information printed or etched on the jewelry article. Furthermore, given the vast amount of information that could be recorded in micro- or nano-sized human readable text or images on the jewelry article, an NFC chip may not even have the storage capacity to store such data.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 5,726,435 discloses methods for storing data by generating two-dimensional codes as an image, otherwise generally known as QR codes, as a binary coded plurality of cells on objects that can then be optically detected and decoded for inputting information into a computer or the like. A method of reading such system to recover the stored data is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,948. A use of the QR code is contemplated in U.S. Pat. No. 8,881,990, where the code is printed on a medical bracelet or worn jewelry containing pertinent medical information either directly from the QR code or from a dedicated website. The invention describes a way to retrieve a URL and a PIN number in a compact way to replace the information that would be too large to be printed onto the jewelry article.
However, none of the above discussed references contemplate associating the information recorded on the QR code and any human readable information printed or etched on the jewelry article. Furthermore, the low storage limitation of the QR code would prohibit storage of the human readable information. The difference between the current invention and medical bracelet is the how the QR code is used. The medical bracelet application uses the QR code because it cannot print all the information. The current invention uses the QR code as a convenient alternative to read the printed human readable information printed or etched into the jewelry.
Accordingly, there is a need for providing a wearer of a jewelry article including micro- or nano-sized etched or printed human readable information to be able to access such information without the use of a visual aid.